Building a Successful Employer Brand Strategy Fast

Brand strategy is a foundational practice for any business. A solid brand strategy can help steer a company toward its mission, vision, and strategic goals. Branding goes beyond logos, marketing, and product labels though. It’s the north star that guides every department in a business, including human resources. This is where the idea of an employer brand becomes relevant. 

What is Employer Branding? 

Seth Godin defines a brand as “a story, a set of emotions and expectations and a stand-in for how we think and feel about what you do.” One could say that your brand is your business reputation – how customers and competitors see you. Branding encompasses all the activities and symbols that help build that reputation.  

Following that train of thought, an employer brand is a set of expectation current and potential employees have about your business. What is your reputation as an employer? Your strong employer brand can help you attract top talent, increase staff morale and reduce turnover – which can significantly lower hiring costs. The right brand strategy will make people want to work for you.

How to Create a Successful Employer Brand

Cultivating an effective employer brand is a process and requires a lot of introspection. Before getting into your employer brand strategy, it’s important to consider what you want to be known for as a company, what kind of talent you want to attract, and what type of environment those job seekers find attractive. 

What do you want to be known for? 

Every business should be driven by its mission, vision, and values – the impact it wishes to make in the world. A company’s HR policies should align with those aspects of your bigger brand. So, your mission, vision, and values should ideally shape the type of workplace and employer you choose to be. 

If your business values a hustle culture, then the workplace has to attract job seekers with a great work ethic who don’t mind working late or on the weekends. Creating an environment where workers can rest, eat, and shower when they’re working overtime is one way to cultivate a hustle culture. 

Some companies value health and wellbeing, so as an employer they create an environment that fosters work-life balance or even work-life integration. In cases like this, it’s important that this policy is implemented throughout the various departments and value chains.

For example, you might need to tell your sales team not to accept deals or new work on Fridays that are due on Mondays or you may need to incorporate holidays into the equation so that you can meet project deadlines without asking employees to work over the holidays.

What kind of talent do you want to attract?

The next step is to define your ideal employee persona. Attracting top talent is one thing, but you need to hire people who will mesh well with your company culture. The more detailed your employee persona is, the better HR will be at finding the best fit. 

Once you’re able to answer these two questions, aligning communicating what you value authentically throughout your company and marketing campaigns becomes easier. We can help you establish your employer brand strategy. 

David Marko, Business Consulting